Project Management Systems For The Modern Age

Managing your troops can feel like a constant battle with everyone having these things called emotions and feelings. Working out the dynamics of your team so everyone gets along and the work is being completed at a top level is your end goal for team management. Having a collaborative management system that works seamlessly in the cloud can make project management and staff management a breeze, Here we cover a few that really stand out for digital marketers.

Finding your voice as a leader can be difficult and findings system that all the team members are comfortable using and that can be used with almost anything and for anyone is tough, I personally use Google Drive and dropbox. Google drive has the most versatile products in its arsenal with sheets and docs far over powering excel and word for functionality. If you have ever managed a team of freelancers from all across the globe you can appreciate the ease of google drive for sharing and collaborating. It’s no secret I’m A massive gmail fan and getting a FREE gmail isn’t the only win when you sign up look forward to 15gig of cloud storage with google drive plus a host of other google properties all free.

As a start up I relied heavily on the freeware of google to help me power my client on-boarding and management system functionality of what the project management systems provide in this post a huge help for me and Im still using three of them to this day taking them over fancy overpriced management systems that lack functionality and integration based on your subscription level. Of course some of the systems mentioned here do have paid upgrades that significantly boost their overall functionality but I would say you can do so much with the free versions and depending on your size of business you might need to upgrade one of these services and still do so much with what these management systems offer in the free sign up.

Management systems in the digital marketing world are complex, overpriced and not functional enough for today’s teams.

What Project management Systems Do I Use?

Google Drive Can You Dig It?

All your documents in a shareable folder on the cloud. You don’t need to sign up to some project management software just to get your work from a “agency” or “client” I’ve been asked to join that many management softwares I can’t remember the last one that I used more than three times.I am a huge Google drive guy for processes and systems management where I can add or remove collaborator’s and share single doc’s or sheets plus Google sheets integration with various API’s is the advantage that I want my project management systems to utilise and give me the functionality that I need.

My number one project management resource is Google Drive.

You simply sign up for a gmail account

Complete registration and voila you now have one of The most robust software suites for free. YouTube, Google plus, Blogger, Google my business and much much more are all waiting for you once you sign up for a gmail account.

Second Place Dropbox

With Dropbox you have a cloud storage that provides you free space to save files, docs photos and more. Not as features rich as G drive but still a decent competitor

You have the option to pay for an increase in storage space or very innovative and a great marketing effort from Dropbox is to have referrals for more space so send ten emails to get extra space added to your dropbox account.

Management Systems worthy of a mention.

Slack

Slack is more like an instant chat where you can group chat or single chat and exchange pictures videos or files. It has a nice UI and is quite easy to use even for a complete computer caveman you can pick up slack messaging in about 2 messages.

Trello

Trello is big in the SEO community for client on-boarding and project management. There are marketers using Trello as their complete system so it does work and some of the ways I’ve seen it used are quite innovative.

Trello integrates with many other management systems type softwares and is visually easy to use, there is a slight learning curve but with a simple click around on all the buttons you will quickly become familiar with the UI and understand how it works.

Much like Google Drive this Management System can be copied from another user and used as your own project management system for controlling your operations.

Worthy mentions:

Basecamp

Asana

Wrike

Teamwork

I think that Teamwork and Wrike are more suited to larger agencies or a business that has many moving parts possibly involving a lot of co-operation on projects. Basecamp is good for project management and organisation of projects.

What to look for in your complete project management software and your company preferred management systems.

1. Functionality

2. Collaboration

3. Easy to use

4. Pricing

5. Storage and restrictions

6. Integration

If you use a management system not listed here and it is making your life easier than drop the name in the comments and give your pro’s and con’s for it’s functionality.

Thanks for reading and I hope these help you project manage with ease.

Live Support or are they just Chat Bots?

Those live chat popups that hit you with the automated line “Hello! How can I help you?” as soon as you arrive on a website could they be the future of customer service help me now scenarios?

How do you feel about them being intrusive or annoying?

The idea is to provide a helpful guide to answer some of the frequently asked question and provide support on basic trouble shooting.

In some cases you might get an actual person on the chat but most of the chat box features are automated. The automated replies may help some users but the actual useful rating will extend to the depth of thought put in by the site owner when building the chat bot.

I find some chat help box’s useful while most just annoying, I classify annoying as once I land on a website a chat box opens saying “hi I’m Andrew how can I help?” This could be avoided by letting the person browse the site for a set time period I would suggest 2 minutes approx setting.

Live Support Online

The new customer service model is to help people on your business website live while they are browsing, sounds a little creepy waiting for someone to arrive on your website and then having a pop up live chat box to help them with anything.

Can it mean a downturn in customer service help desk jobs for companies? Yes

Have you visited a website and been speaking to the customer service chat box and started to notice the text replies sound a bit robotic? read more about the effects of live chat bots here.

I would imagine so but it does not mean the end of customer service call centres not in the slightest there will always be a need to speak to a human help desk operator.

Are Live Support Chat Bots Useful?

Recently Google noted that reports showed 20% of mobile queries were voice searches. Recent rises in people searching with voice commands and by personal assistants such as Apple’s “Siri” are gaining popularity and will only increase as the technology improves. Remember when Siri launched and was extremely limited? yes I do too and I tell you back then she was ahead of the pack well recent updates still leave a lot to be desired but the Siri application is far ahead of many competitors and provides millions of people with search results daily.

How far has voice search come lately well for my friends in the Amazon eCommerce world they have recently had to adapt to voice search with Amazon and Google adopting voice search commands check out the various reviews of the new Google Home and Amazon’s own Echo for shopping at home read more on customer reviews positive, negative and mixed. If we look ahead in terms of these live support chat boxes and on demand impulse micro moment purchases the future should also include live action right now live support and this can be in the form of a live support assistant answering questions as they come in or by an automated customer service chat bot, BUT! and the key to a successful live support chat bot will be the information loaded into the FAQ scripts how much effort has the programmer put into the script for problem solving if these live Google Home and Amazon Echo type searches are happening right now then the answers these people will have should be right now while that sale query is live while its happening.

How long before Facebook enters the eCommerce world with all their extended reach and automation? who knows but I would put money on it Facebook founder mark Zuckerberg has some plans buried deep in his ideas notepad for a Facebook move towards eCommerce Pages or Groups interesting concept and if you think about it that move would make total sense for Facebook.

Instant Messaging services and automated text SMS isn’t customer friendly I would prefer the automated messages come to my email than my mobile that to me just preys on impulse buyers and not something I am a fan of. Functionality of customer service automation should be considered for really helping customer questions and complaints look to design for UX over UI when it comes to support question answering you need to protect your reputation online over having a pretty customer portal.

Wondering what processes a take place when using a Live support chat bot? see this.

Courtesy of Daden Limited.

Then they show that show to the people

Not a fan of the chat box and when you have a problem you want to speak to someone in the live support chat that can help and can speak your language. One of the more popular platforms for customer support is Zendesk I’ve had positive experiences when I’ve needed to contact them for support far more user friendly than the chat bot live support. While not live support chat orientated they are a worthy customer support service.

Over marketing – when someone is lead to your website, then asked to opt in to the email list, then asked if they need assistance by your chat bot while browsing your products but as they leave they are hit with an exit pop up.

Simple Marketing

Keeping your marketing simple on your website can be the difference between keep a customer and scaring a potential customer away. My tip is to visit your competitors website and see what they are running for marketing, observe what the journey is like and imagine yourself as the customer following this marketing route.

Immerse yourself in what it would be like as a customer to see how it feels on your site, do you enjoy talking to me little chat box guy as soon as you arrive on site? Was his opening sentence scripted well enough to make you even interact with him? Assess how it makes you feel and use this when you design your customer journey, if you are not a fan of chat bot support then do not use one on your site but if you are a fan of chat bot support services then by all means add a automated customer service chat support script to your website.

Being over sold isn’t something people enjoy and you should know when to use your marketing and where on your website.

Do you still want to call someone when you have a problem a real person paid to help you when you have a problem dedicated solely to customer support or are you ok to accept the live chat pop up window helper? that is the question.

I for one prefer the call centre and real human interaction over live support chat bots.

I decided to write about how to compete by not competing with your competitors after watching my Facebook news feed fill up with sponsored adverts by “digital marketing” local businesses targeting the same damn audience and that made me think about the diversity of clientele out there that are going to be upset that they have not been marketed to enough yet said no one ever.

When I set up my client targeting I try to look outside the box I think if i was a big marketing agency that had 30+ mouths to feed what would be my big fish that I would need to target to be able to feed my troops and then I work out businesses that are similar to those “big fish classified” businesses and work on their similarities I dont want to target the same clientele as the large agencies I could not compete head on they have more firepower to invest in the marketing campaign than I do and going up against a large agency with a larger marketing budget doesnt sound like a bright idea…..just yet 🙂

So now I know who my larger competitors are targeting and I know the similar related business types that I CAN target and I begin to prepare my marketing campaign focused on that client and Im competing with the larger agency but not directly, and if I wanted to be very cheeky and get them to do a lot of the hard work I could follow their marketing tactics used for the “big fish” and just make the edits I need based on my smaller big fish client so using their Google Adwords targeting and keywords but adjust them to campaigns needs, Ill watch the advert that is being used on Facebook or on Google Adwords search display and see the level of engagement it gets obviously on Facebook I can tell right away if it is going to be a winner by the likes, comments tags and shares so if I see that then I use a similar image never a direct copy of what they use and then use that as my go to ad image for my campaign. #competingnotcompeting

Compete without competing

The phrase “compete without competing” is a tad confusing like how can you do that? #compete Well you are going to be competing with your competitors but not directly making your job of client targeting have a much less competitive barrier to get ahead in.

1. Compare your target audience to your competitors

Are you targeting the same prospective clients as your competitors? ask your lead generation team why? with the landscape so broad and so many businesses out there why settle for marketing to the exact same audience as your competitors, I would measure my competitors content and paid ads to see if we are targeting the same audience and if we are then adjust the aim on my client scope to find a pocket of potential clients that they are not marketing towards is it me or does that just make sense?

When you have no boarders restricting your targeting dont think so narrowly that you miss out on what is right in front of you. Everyone knows a doctor or a plumber if you get to a roadblock in your client targeting look to your family for leads who do you know in your family that does something not so mainstream, do you know someone that works at a morgue? Can you remember the name of that aunt whose partner is the guy that owns the company responsible for home distress alarm installations? think outside the box this works for agency level and small work from home types (like myself) the work is out there and you just need to know how to find it.

If your competitor A is targeting primary schools and competitor B is targeting Universities the natural target for you might be to focus in on high schools would you agree? none of your competitors are targeting them, Wrong go one step sideways and focus in a more specific schooling example such as secondary schooling services for those that missed out on finishing high school, or focus in on specialist schools such as ballet, dance, vocal coaching maybe you want to look at trades and apprentices see how a shift sideways can open up another category of prospective clients.

Dont mirror your competitors target audience.

2. Look at what they are doing compared to what you are doing

Your competitors are doing something that works, they have a client base and are pushing their sales and marketing now what are they doing that is working for them to keep bringing in new clients?

You can use elements of what the competitor is doing in your marketing but I strongly advise against a straight cut copy and paste this is not ethical or innovative just pure lazy use your own twist to take the core of what is working for them and twist it to sound like your brands voice and highlight your brands unique selling position so that you have a winning foundation and then add your own voice to it, be creative go forward and conquer. Online marketing is competitive enough without hijacking the exact marketing campaign that your competitors are using that will be asking for trouble and no doubt will not return results as well as you had planned.

I will facepalm myself every time I see a mirror image marketing campaign of a successful Facebook ad campaign someone markets an eCom product really well on Facebook or Instagram and within the next 48 hours the advertising for that product have increased by ten fold it’s like the people that have no creativity have seen a Facebook ad for a solar powered mobile phone charger with over 100 likes, 40 tags and comments and thought to themselves “Thats selling red hot, I need to sell this exact same thing and Ill use that same image” look out Facebook news feeds here comes the hot-stepper.

3. Reverse Engineer their most effective methods

Reverse engineering sounds like a fancy way to say steal their techniques and while it is if you just cut copy and paste what they are doing and use it in your business, be original and put your twist on the technique make it work for you and make it as unique as you can.

One successful campaign I saw was a greyed out background with the offer & call to action (CTA) in highlighted red colours really featuring the offer and what that marketing company wanted you to focus on it certainly drew my focus in on what it was and what I was supposed to do. I then reverse engineered this method for an ecommerce store product I have and used the grey background with an orange highlighted offer and call to action that was my focus point in the advert.

This worked really well for a week and a half then I myself was hijacked with the exact same advert 🙁 but it goes to show that if it works you can emulate it with your own voice and be successful, I made $980.00 from $68.00 ad spend all in all a decent ROI on my paid ads campaign. The person who hijacked my ad set had a dismal 2 likes no comments and 1 share, they may not of achieved the same results but they opted to use the exact same advert I was using but changed the text on the advert they used a white overlay with black shadow effect under the text not a very good choice considering the background was grey but that shows lack of innovation.

I used a billboard advert as my foundation for creation I took the colour scheme that made me look at that billboard and used it to run a Facebook ad campaign for a retail product completely different to what the original billboard advert was selling and to think back I believe it was real estate selling affordable land from memory.

4. There is enough work for everyone

Remember that there is enough work for everyone if you know where and how to find it, you do not want to reverse engineer what your competitor is doing and then target the same leads that they are that is lazy and I would call it unprofessional. Lets look at it like this

there is a suburb with four fuel stations and 2 hundred thousand people living in this suburb thats should work out to 50,000 people to each fuel station not bad and lets say marketing company A, B, C and D are all located around the first 2 fuel stations and market to those people who attend the first two fuel stations everyday getting the faces of the people filling up their vehicles selling the same product or service while fuel stations 3 and 4 are not even on the radar for the marketing companies until marketing company D decides that its a cramped feeding ground at the fuel stations 1 and 2 and head s over to fuel station 4 and sets up his marketing stand to the fuel station where he has zero competition he is there with no competitors and can operate without dropping prices or sacrificing quality as he has a stream of incoming leads at the service station number 4.

Now marketing company C notices that company D has gone walkabout and shifts the focus to fuel station 4 when marketing company C gets to fuel station 4 he notices marketing company D doing really well with people at his marketing stand showing interest he pauses and thinks to himself “hmm if D can have a station to himself let me do some math 4 companies x 4 fuel stations = 1 per station” he’s a smart cookie this marketing company and he gives marketing company D the nod and navigates towards fuel station 3 with the help of trusty Google Maps app on his mobile phone the marketing company C is off to claim his stake in fuel station glory and when he gets to fuel station 3 he sets up his stand and gets to work marketing to an untapped client pool.

Now you can imagine what is happening back with marketing company A & B cant you? do you think they have noticed the changes and made moves to secure their own stream of continued to compete?

knowing most marketing agencies I would put money on they have noticed a slight increase in clientele now that two competitors have moved away and they think that they have the sweet spot in the market and continue to pump fuel station 1 & 2 with marketing offers the same goes with marketing company B completely blind to the bigger picture and still peddling to the same audience.

Now humor me a little and in the comments below tell me if you think it is completely possible that since the marketing companies A & B are so focused in on the two fuel stations that they completely overlook two fuel stations in their area that either marketing company C or D have now had such a success with their efforts that they have put more people on to grow and scale their agency that they can now send dedicated marketing teams back to fuel service station’s 1 & 2 to start offering marketing services and because they are new faces with new offers the customers at fuel station 1 & 2 have been seeing the same adverts every day they have become almost blind to marketing companies A & B and welcome a fresh approach and this is where the beauty of smart out of the box marketing comes into play.

Be creative and work out where your competitors are there is so much work out there you do not need to focus on the same client base.

5. Leverage your unique selling point in the market space

Your business is unique to you but how can you showcase that uniqueness to your audience? To stand out from your competitors you need to have your own identity imagine if you and your competitors were all pitching the same service and that was you, company A, company B, Company C and so on all pitching for a customer how would you stand out? you wouldn’t and the customer would choose the person whose business was the first returned search result if online, but you can stand out and attract attention to your business by having a unique selling point you can sell insurance but can you sell insurance with a twist? of course you can it is about being creative to capture your audience so they come to you and not company a, B and C.

Well, the way they make shows is, they make one show. That show’s called a pilot. Then they show that show to the people who make shows, and on the strength of that one show they decide if they’re going to make more shows. Some pilots get picked and become television programs. Some don’t, become nothing. She starred in one of the ones that became nothing.

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**What products and solutions are suitable for Area on the web product sales?**

This video will challenge you to think outside the box when marketing no one likes a cut copy cat and paster.

Be the smart marketer and use innovation in your campaigns to do something different and stand out against your competitors

Online marketing is a super competitive industry and it is only going to get more and more competitive as we evolve with technology and move more towards digital marketing, be ahead of the game and notice the trends as they happen try and diagnose popular trends and the way in that consumers interact with technology one such example I am getting my ears wet on is the near me search function on mobile search a massive market for bringing in new clients by helping them optimise for near me micro moments when people need their business in the moment can they be found? yes if you optimise for it.

Online marketing is the future for local businesses they will need to adapt and change with the times and a smart marketing agency will be there before that change is going to happen planning and preparing for the shift in consumer habits ushering in a new way in which consumers search for businesses can drive a tonne of new client business to a marketing firm if they understand how to analyse the market.

Nearly any solution can be promoted online to a community market place if you are organised to put in the time, work and expense essential to make an impression. You may well be in a position to get comparatively speedy final results with some merchandise. But typically talking due to the fact you are dealing with a confined geographic place the range of future clients on the lookout for your merchandise at any supplied time will be somewhat compact. So the reaction will ordinarily be slow in coming.

But if you are planning to be all-around for the very long haul, persistent on-line promoting initiatives will inevitably pay out off. And the finest time to get began is suitable now. There is certainly little doubt that there are more than enough potential clients out there if you know how to find them.

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